Wagner is aware that, of those voting in 2012, 61.7 million Americans didn't vote for Barack, right? (Only 65.9 million did vote for him. That's not a majority.) She is aware that people don't have to love a War Criminal who carries out a Drone War just because she can't stop shoving her fist up herself and screaming, "Lord, it's coming, Barack's bring me home again! Yes! Yes! The GOP is Satan!"

We don't all love Barack. He spies on Americans, he lies to Americans. He's a cheap thug that tired, lazy people like Alex Wagner climax too because they're so pathetic and so stupid.

James HarrisonHarrison twice declined
White House invites after winning the Super Bowl, spurning both Obama
and former President George W. Bush — not because of their politics, but
because he felt the whole idea of inviting championship teams was
hollow.

"This is how I feel — if you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don't win the Super Bowl," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, he [Obama] would've invited Arizona if they had won."

Amen. The crooks in the White House just use people. Sports stars should stop showing up. Maybe a 35 year old who used to write about pop culture isn't really smart enough to host a news show?

Thursday,
August 22, 2013. Chaos and violence continue, the White House wants to
further arm Nouri, medical professionals take to the streets of Iraq to
protest, among today's targets for bombings is a wedding, an Iraqi
woman attempts to seek justice via the US courts, Barack's illegal
spying continues, and more.

Governments with enormous wealth
for the officials and enormous poverty for the people tend to be
government's with gross human rights abuses. To maintain an enormous
disparity, officials will often resort to violent attacks on the very
people they claim to represent. With that in mind, let's look at Iraq.

Commander
of Iraqi Air Force Anwar Hama Amin disclosed that Iraq needs 90 jet
fighters to build its air force, pointing that the Turkish and Iranian
violations will continue unless Iraq is supplied with these fighters in
the coming stage.

In
a press statement, today, he described the US F 16 fighters deal as
"the deal of dreams", which shall be a complete project comprising of 36
planes by 2016.

It is expected that the first dispatch will arrive in September 2014.

Friday, Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
in DC. He was there for his Thursday visit with US Secretary of State
John Kerry. We covered the event in Friday's snapshot and in Monday's. Today we're going to note another aspect. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has posted video and audio of the DC event. And they also now have a [PDF format warning] transcript of the event.Josh
Rogin: Thank you very much, I'm Josh Rogin with Newsweek and the Daily
Beast. Thank you for your time today. As you know, uh, as we discussed,
increased security cooperation is one of the main request of the Iraqi
government is for new U.S. arm sales to Iraq. Lawmakers here in
Washington are concerned about those sales for two reasons. They believe
that Iraq is still allowing Iran to use Iraqi airspace to promote the
flow of arms to the Assad regime. Also they are concerned that the Iraqi
government may use uh U.S. weapons uh towards political ends to
marginalize the political opposition as we've seen in the past. What
assurances can you give us on both of these fronts? What specific steps
are you taking to stop the arms flow from Iran over Iraqi airspace to
Assad? And what assurances can you give us that, as we approach new
elections, that U.S. weapons won’t be used for domestic political
purposes? Thank you.

Minister Hosyar Zebari:
Definitely my government will abide by all the rules and regulations
that you here in the United States or Congress will impose on arm sales.
Not only to Iraq to many other countries in the world. So we will
abide by that, definitely, for these weapons not to be used for domestic
use or improperly. But to be used for the defense of the country. Now
on the flight of -- the overflight of -- of Iranian using Iraqi airspace
-- let me give you the reality and Sometimes we are speaking
theoretically about the situation, as if Iraq has dozens of fighters or
aircrafts. For your information, Iraq doesn't have a single fighter
plane up to now. It has a couple of helicopters, some training let's say
planes, small planes, but it doesn't have a single aircraft to protect
its airspace. Iraq up until now doesn't have an integrated self-defense
to protect its skies. We have requested and we are waiting for the
delivery. So, that is the situation when we talk about Iraq's
capabilities and deterrence capabilities to prevent others from using
its airspace and so on. We have made demarches to the Iranians. We don't
want and we don't support you or any other to use our airspace because
it runs against our policy of taking an independent, neutral position
here, not to militarize the conflict in any way. And we have done a
number of inspections. These inspections could not be, I mean, endorsed
by some circles here in the United States. That this could choose only
those who carry legitimate equipment or material. But we have raised the
possibility here, really, we will continue to live up to our
commitments here. But there are Security Council resolutions banning
these from leaving Iran. Under Chapter VII, whether its weapons,
imports, export -- we don't have the capabilities of enforcing this.
Though politically we have made these demarches. So who's going to
reinforce that? Is it the Security Council or who? We've taken note
actually of the U.S. administration’s serious concerns about this [. .
.]

We'll stop there. Before we go to the next exchange,
two things. One, when I am quoting someone speaking in English and it's
not their native language, I do not include "uh" or "uhm." These
moments can be revealing -- in any language -- when someone does it in
their native language. In a second or third (or more) language, they
may not be revealing of anything other than the person is not speaking
in their native language so we do not include the uhs or uhms. That's
the policy here. Second, Zebari's recent lies has been Iraq's no longer
got to worry! Chapter VII is over!! Truthfully, it's been replaced
with Chapter VI. That was too much truth for Zebari. But isn't it
interesting that he's citing the no longer existent Chapter VII. Same
topic, of weapons, asked again at the event, we'll skip the first part
of the question (we covered that in Monday's snapshot). This is Wallace
Hays. Not "Wallace Hayes" as I wrongly typed Monday. A friend passed
that on. You can find a profile of Wallace Hays here. My apologies for getting the spelling of his last name wrong.

Wallace
Hays: Hi, Wallace Hays, Independent Consultant I wanted to give you an
opportunity, a lot of people here feel like there's been a lack of
political reconciliation in Iraq and that it has been U.S. policy to
support the Erbil Agreement, which has not been implemented in Iraq.
And, following up on Mr. Rogin's question, why should -- I'd like to
give you the opportunity to explain, why should the United States sell
arms to Iraq, when in fact many people believe that the lack of
political reconciliation is contributing to some of the violence today?
Thanks.

Minister Hoshyar Zebari: Thank you. Political
reconciliation is the key issue really, for Iraq and the stability of
Iraq and I think that all of the key leaders believe that this is the
way forward. With the hydrocarbon law, with normalizing relations with
Saudi Arabia, with Turkey, I mean all the questions have been pointed
questions about the core issue in Iraq. So, the political reconciliation
is moving, it's not stagnant. I mean, look at the representatives of
the Sunni community, let's say or from al-Iraqi parliamentary blocs.
They are now represented in Parliament, now they are represented in
government. They may feel that they are underrepresented or
marginalized, this is a fair call, I mean we could do more about that,
definitely. But really the lessons that came out of this local election
were very, very important. Many people believe they could do with the
majoritarian democracy or political majority government, that the one
sect or one group could win all over and rule by themselves, it proved
they couldn't. They could win but they could not govern. And I think
everyone realized and recognized that there has to be an inclusive
democracy, a nonsectarian democracy, in Iraq for this country to have
any future.

Zebari's remarks there are pure nonsense. We
called them out in Monday's snapshot, refer to that. In terms of Hays
picking up on Rogen's question, please note that Zebari doesn't really
address that (except via a false portrayal of current Iraqi politics).

The U.S. government has notified Congress
in recent weeks of its intention to sell Iraq $4.7 billion worth of
military equipment, but none of those sales include the top item on
Iraq’s shopping list, the Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopters. The House
Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
have refused to allow the sale of the helicopters to date.

“The
committee continues to carefully review all proposed arms sales to Iraq
in order to ensure that such transfers support U.S. national security
interests in the region,” a House Foreign Affairs Committee spokesman
told The Daily Beast. Two administration officials confirmed that until
the committees sign off, the U.S. government won’t be able to complete
the arms deal.

The
State Department is negotiating with the leaders of those committees
behind the scenes to alleviate concerns about the sale. Committee
leaders are worried the Iraqi government will use the helicopters to go
after their domestic enemies, not just suspected terrorists. Also
lawmakers are convinced that Iraq still allows Iran to fly arms over
Iraqi airspace to aid the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

These are serious concerns. They are not new concerns. At the end of 2011, for example, Anna Mulrine (Christian Science Monitor) pointed out:The apparent effort of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
to consolidate power since the US [drawdown] is worrisome to some
defense analysts in the US, who say it's conceivable that he could use
weapons purchased from the US against his political enemies and the
people of Iraq.

Outside of Congress, the US government
has not taken the concerns seriously. As we noted Friday, Zebari lied
and downplayed the April assault:

Hoshyar Zebari: As I said
before, really we have demonstrations, sit-ins, all over the country for
the past eight months and the government never resorted to the kind of
violence -- except in one or two incidences in Haiwja. And I'm not here
to justify this violations whatsoever. But really the government has
tolerated this so far to go on without any intimidations.

Not
only did the government murder Iraqis, it did so via equipment the US
government sold them. Without the helicopters the US sold Iraq, the
massacre would not be possible because Nouri's forces were denied entry
into Kirkuk by the governor. To get inside Kirkuk, to Hawija, they had
to fly over. This was made very clear when Shalaw Mohammed (Niqash) interviewed Governor Najm al-Din Karim back in May:

Al-Din
Karim: Neither I, as governor, nor the provincial council have changed
our opinions on this issue. We don’t want the Tigris Operations Command
here and we don’t accept their presence. Although we have agreed to form
a committee in Baghdad to try and resolve this impasse.

NIQASH:
The incidents in Hawija, where protestors were killed by the Iraqi
military, also seems to have seen more Iraqi army forces enter Kirkuk.

Al-Din
Karim: Actually those forces did not come through Kirkuk - they entered
Hawija by helicopter. They tried to come through Kirkuk but we
prevented them from doing so. I know the Prime Minister disapproved of
this – he told me so last time we met.

Without the
helicopters the US sold to Iraq, that massacre wouldn't have happened.
That massacre is important because people were killed and wounded and it
became clear that Nouri was ready to turn on groups of Iraqis. That
massacre is also seen as a major point in the continued escalation of
violence in Iraq. Last week, the International Crisis Group issued "Make or Break: Iraq’s Sunnis and the State" and this is their take on Hawija:

As
events in Syria nurtured their hopes for a political comeback, Sunni
Arabs launched an unprecedented, peaceful protest movement in late 2012
in response to the arrest of bodyguards of Rafea al-Issawi, a prominent
Iraqiya member. It too failed to provide answers to accumulated
grievances. Instead, the demonstrations and the repression to which they
gave rise further exacerbated the sense of exclusion and persecution
among Sunnis. The government initially chose a lacklustre,
technical response, forming committees to unilaterally address
protesters’ demands, shunning direct negotiations and tightening
security measures in Sunni-populated areas. Half-hearted, belated
concessions exacerbated distrust and empowered more radical factions.
After a four-month stalemate, the crisis escalated. On 23 April,
government forces raided a protest camp in the city of Hawija, in Kirkuk
province, killing over 50 and injuring 110. This sparked a wave of
violence exceeding anything witnessed for five years. Attacks against
security forces and, more ominously, civilians have revived fears of a
return to all-out civil strife. The Islamic State of Iraq, al-Qaeda’s
local expression, is resurgent. Shiite militias have responded against
Sunnis. The government’s seeming intent to address a chiefly political
issue – Sunni Arab representation in Baghdad – through tougher security
measures has every chance of worsening the situation. Belittled,
demonised and increasingly subject to a central government crackdown,
the popular movement is slowly mutating into an armed struggle. In this
respect, the absence of a unified Sunni leadership – to which Baghdad’s
policies contributed and which Maliki might have perceived as an asset –
has turned out to be a serious liability. In a showdown that is
acquiring increasing sectarian undertones, the movement’s proponents
look westward to Syria as the arena in which the fight against the Iraqi
government and its Shiite allies will play out and eastward toward Iran
as the source of all their ills. Under intensifying
pressure from government forces and with dwindling faith in a political
solution, many Sunni Arabs have concluded their only realistic option is
a violent conflict increasingly framed in confessional terms. In turn,
the government conveniently dismisses all opposition as a sectarian
insurgency that warrants ever more stringent security measures. In the
absence of a dramatic shift in approach, Iraq’s fragile polity risks
breaking down, a victim of the combustible mix of its long­standing
flaws and growing regional tensions.

And yet the
White House wants to provide more weapons to Nouri? In 2010, Iraq held
parliamentary elections and Ayad Allawi's Iraqiya beat Nouri's State of
Law. Nouri refused to honor the will of the Iraqi people, the
democratic process or his country's Constitution. He refused to step
down and he refused to allow a new Parliament to be seated. This was
the political stalemate, it lasted for over eight months -- only because
Nouri had the support of the White House. It was ended by the
US-brokered Erbil Agreement, a legal contract that gave cry baby Nouri a
second term he did not earn. The political leaders signed the contract
because (a) the White House swore it was binding and would have the
full backing of the US government, (b) the leaders wanted to end the
stalemate and (c) in exchange for giving Nouri a second term, he agreed
to give them certain things (like implementing Article 140 of the Iraqi
Constitution). Nouri broke the contract after being announced prime
minister for a second term.

The above demonstrates
that (a) Nouri's word is worthless, (b) Nouri will not honor the Iraqi
Constitution, (c) Nouri does not feel bound by any laws and (d) he has
no respect for the Iraqi people as evidenced by his ignoring their will
at the voting box.

Yet this is someone the White House wants to trust with more weapons?

April 10, 2008, we attended the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing and reported on it here including this:

"Just
understand my frustration," Biden explained. "We want to normalize a
government that really doesn't exist." Senator Russ Feingold wanted to
know if there were "any conditions that the Iraq government must meet?"
No, that thought never occurred to the White House. "Given the fact
that the Maliki government doesn't represent a true coalition," Feingold
asked, "won't this agreement [make it appear] we are taking sides in
the civil war especially when most Iraqi Parliamentarians have called
for the withdrawal of troops?"

What's changed since then?
Joe Biden is no longer a US senator, he's Vice President and Russ
Feingold is, sadly, no longer in the US Senate either after losing a
re-election bid. He's now the US Special Envoy for DRC and Great Lakes
Region in Africa. On the Iraqi side?

Not a thing's changed.
Nouri remains unpopular. His government even more "doesn't represent a
true coalition." How could it? Iraqiya got the most votes and should
hold the most Cabinet posts -- forget the fact that Allawi should be
prime minister -- yet they're not even represented having walked out of
the Cabinet after they were not included in one decision making process
after another.

And yet the White House continues to want to arm Iraq?

And yet there are no checks and balances.

The
reality of the Hawija assault -- noted on Iraqi social media and in the
Iraqi press but ignored everywhere else -- is that the US trained and
supplied those fighters. No, I'm not referring to before the 2011 US
'withdrawal.' Barack sent a Special Ops unit into Iraq in the fall of
2012 and they trained the fighters. "SWAT" is not native to Iraq or to
Arabic speakers. "SWAT" is a US term which stands for Special Weapons
And Tactics. A comparable phrase, in Arabic, would not spell "SWAT."
It was a new phrase introduced in Iraq where it was pronounced and
spelled "SWAT." Because the Americans involved were too damn to hide
their own tracks. For a brief time when the word emerged in Iraq, there
was confusion over not just its meaning but also over its
pronunciation.

But set that aside, US sold helicopters were used in an attack on the Iraqi people by the Iraqi government.

What does that mean?

Legally,
it means that the US government was supposed to immediately convene an
investigation. They didn't, they haven't. That is, however, the law
with regards to the sales of weapons. Don't believe me? Let's go back to Anna Mulrane:To
that end, safeguards are in place, US military officials add. Any sale
of more than $50 million requires congressional notification and
post-sale monitoring by those 150 troops still in Iraq, as well. “We’re
not just wholesalely throwing stuff out there to be used anywhere,” says
Klein.

Oh, yes, Lt Col Jeffrey Klein, you are throwing
stuff out there to be used anywhere and Hawija demonstrates that. There
is no monitoring, there is no investigation, there is no
accountability. And in light of Nouri's killing over 50 people, 8 of
which were children, for the 'crime' of peaceful assembly, the White
House doesn't bat an eye but continues to press for more weapon sales to
Nouri and attempts to strong arm Congress into supporting that move.

The
unrest in Iraq has many causes. Chief among them, a failed prime
minister who has been allowed to serve seven years. The Bully Boy Bush
administration installed him in 2006 (Iraq's Parliament had wanted
Ibrahim al-Jafaari) and, in 2007, he signed off on the so-called
benchmarks. Democratic leaders in Congress were pretending to do their
job. The US had spent how much money in Iraq? (Go back and read the
statements made, few Dem leaders noted the US dead in Iraq -- those who
did made it a fleeting point.) If money was to be spent in Iraq in the
future, there was a need to see progress. The White House proposed a
series of benchmarks by which progress could be measured and the
Democrats agreed with them.

The benchmarks did not include
'reduction in deaths of US troops' because, again, the leadership was
not concerned about US blood spilled. Nouri signed off on the
benchmarks as well.

Today, there is conflict over whether or not
ExxonMobil has the right to drill for oil in the KRG. The hideous
Victoria Nuland attempted to interject herself into that discussion as
State Dept spokesperson. As a government official, she should have kept
her mouth shut (that was conveyed to her by superiors) because the US
government does not control business. But more to the point, if Nouri
doesn't want them in the KRG, he should have gotten off his lazy and
ineffective ass long ago. In 2007, he signed off on passing a
hydro-carbons law. That was a White House defined benchmark.

He
never did it. And the Congress never did a damn thing about it. (After
the initial headlines, pretty much everyone in Congress had agreed to
ignore the benchmarks and just keep funding war and Nouri's government
-- even 'brave' Barbara Lee. By 2008, the only member of Congress
regularly raising the benchmarks and their failure was US House Rep
Lloyd Doggett.)

So that conflict is due to Nouri and his
failures. Conflict arises, of course, from his failure to honor The
Erbil Agreement and implement the power-sharing arrangement for
government. Conflict arises over the mass arrests, over the arrests of
family members when Nouri's forces can't find a suspect, over the
detention and imprisonment of these people, over the abuses which take
place in Iraqi prisons.

Conflict has also arisen over the lack of jobs, the huge unemployment, the lack of public services and the poverty.

Today, Kitabat notes
that the Iraqi government has announced 6.4 million Iraqis are living
below the poverty line. While the number is probably a great deal
higher, with a population estimated at 30 million, today's announcement
recognizes 1/5 of the country's population is living below the poverty
line. Iraq's GDP in 2010 was $144.214 billion in US dollars, Global Finance notes.
That's enough for four billion per Iraqi in Iraq (leaving out the
external refugee population). And yet at least a fifth lives in extreme
poverty. (Below the poverty line is extreme poverty.)

Last December, Seerwan Jafar (Niqash) reported
on the government's national budget and noted that, in 2003, it was
$6.1 billion and had risen to 118.4 billion by 2013 (those figures are
in US dollars). Jafar then examined how much the Iraqi government spent
on the Iraqi citizens. As Iraqis take to the street to demand a more
responsive government, will Nouri again use the US-supplied weapons on
the Iraqi people?

More and more are taking to the streets. Today Haider Ahmed (Al Mada) reports
on Wasit Province where "hundreds of medical professionals" protested
outside Al Zahra Hospital demanding the government provide functional
conditions and recognize the risks that the medical professionals face.
Similar protests took place in Basra, Najaf, Diwaniyah and Babil
today. This also takes place as Nouri's under fire in Iraqi social
media for bringing in approximately one hundred nurses this month from
other countries while Iraq's unemployment rate remains high.

Rates of violence remain high as well. And the method to deliver bombs continues to remain inventive. June saw the horror of the corpse of a dog being used. Today? National Iraqi News Agency reports
that an attack on Sahwa's Secretary-General Sheikh Abbas Muhammadawi
utilized a bomb hidden in a watermelon. The news outlet quotes from a
statement Muhammadawi's office issued: "a terrorist group placed an
explosive device, yesterday evening, in front of the house of Sheikh
Muhammadawi in the west of Baghdad to detonate it when he leaves his
house, but the device was discovered before it exploded and the army
troops and federal police and local police dismantled it and control the
situation. The bomb was placed inside / watermelon / and this is one of
the innovative new criminal methods by gangs of death, so we call on
citizens to take caution of it." Sahwa, also known as Sons Of Iraq (or
Daughters Of Iraq) and Awakenings, are people who were paid by the US
military to stop attacking military property and troops -- they are
largely Sunni but not just Sunni according to General David Petraeus'
April 2008 Congressional testimony.

In other violence, NINA notes
attorney Yasser Hadi al-Obeidi was taken at dawn by "gunmen dressed in
police uniforms" and his corpse was discovered several hours later, a Kirkuk bombing left two people injured, 2 Iraqi soldiers were shot dead in Mosul, and a Mosul roadside bombing left a police officer and a civilian injured. Al Jazeera reports,
"A suicide bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives to a military
headquarters in western Iraq and blew himself up outside it, killing
14, police said." Agencia EFE adds,
"The explosion leveled a military barracks next to the checkpoint and
destroyed two army vehicles, causing serious damage to several civilian
cars." That bombing was in Ramadi. Prior to that bombing, AFP reporteds,
"In Thursday's deadliest attack, a roadside bomb struck a wedding party
in Dujail, north of Baghdad, killing six people and wounding 22 others,
officials said. The blast went off near the musicians who typically
accompany wedding convoys in Iraq, but the bride and groom were
unharmed." Xinhua notes, "Moreover,
unknown gunmen opened fire at a woman in front of her house in Zahra
neighborhood, east of Mosul, and killed her on the spot, the police
said, adding that eight people, including two soldiers, were wounded
when a car bomb exploded in Tal Afar, 70 km west of Mosul." Through yesterday, Iraq Body Count notes 543 violent deaths in Iraq so far this month.

The BRussels Tribunal notes Sundus Shaker Saleh's lawsuit:Saleh
is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit targeting six key
members of the Bush Administration: George W. Bush, Richard Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz. In Saleh v. Bush,
she alleges that the Iraq War was not conducted in self-defense, did
not have the appropriate authorization by the United Nations, and
therefore constituted a "crime of aggression" under international law-a
designation first set down in the Nuremberg Trials after World War II.
The aim of the suit is simple: to achieve justice for Iraqis, and to
show that no one, not even the president of the United States, is above
the law. The case is being brought to trail by Inder Comar of Comar Law, a firm based in San Francisco.

Witness Iraq is a website set up by attorney Comar Law to help Iraqi refugees in the US receive some form of justice for the illegal war:

On March 13, 2013, Witness Iraq filed suit against the Bush Administration related to the conduct of key government officials leading up to the war.The lead plaintiff, Ms. Sundus Saleh, with her children in Jordan:Click here for a FAQ related to the lawsuits.Click here to sign a Change.org Petition requesting the Federal Courts to conduct an inquiry into the Iraq War.Witness
Iraq seeks to hold political leaders accountable for the Iraq War, and
to document the plight of those who witnessed and survived the Iraq War.

Barack's defending Bully Boy Bush. US tax dollars are being used for that purpose. Comar notes at War Is A Crime:In court papers filed today (PDF),
the United States Department of Justice requested that George W. Bush,
Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Paul
Wolfowitz be granted procedural immunity in a case alleging that they
planned and waged the Iraq War in violation of international law.

Plaintiff
Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in
Jordan, filed a complaint in March 2013 in San Francisco federal court
alleging that the planning and waging of the war constituted a “crime of
aggression” against Iraq, a legal theory that was used by the Nuremberg
Tribunal to convict Nazi war criminals after World War II.

"The
DOJ claims that in planning and waging the Iraq War, ex-President Bush
and key members of his Administration were acting within the legitimate
scope of their employment and are thus immune from suit,” chief counsel
Inder Comar of Comar Law said.

If
sequestration means the government has to tighten its belt, maybe the
first step is to let War Criminals pay for their own legal battles? The White House maintains:

Harmful
automatic budget cuts -- known as the sequester -- threaten hundreds of
thousands of jobs, and cut vital services for children, seniors, people
with mental illness and our men and women in uniform.

These
cuts will make it harder to grow our economy and create jobs by
affecting our ability to invest in important priorities like education,
research and innovation, public safety, and military readiness.

But there's money to waste defending Bully Boy Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld? The White House claims
1.2 million kids will lose after school programs, 4 million meals for
seniors ("SICK & HOMEBOUND") will be lost, 30 teachers and school
staff will be lost and much more. But there's money to defend Bully Boy
Bush?

To
protect the former Bush administration officials, the Department of
Justice invokes the “Westfall Act” which “provides that where an
individual claims that federal employees damaged him or her through
their negligent acts or omissions taken within the scope of the office
or employment, a suit against the United States shall be the exclusive
remedy for that individual’s claims.”

Effectively,
what the Justice Department is saying is that because the officials
named in the suit were acting in their capacity as members of the
administration in waging a “war of aggression” in Iraq, Ms. Saleh cannot
sue them and must sue the United States government.

The
Westfall Act is The Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort
Compensation Act of 1988. It was rushed through Congress following the Supreme Court's Westfall v. Erwin ruling
of the same year which the Congress disagreed with. Congress' act does
not make defense an automatic. It requires a finding by the Attorney
General before any move to defend the employee or not defend the
employee can be made. It's no surprise Barack would rush to defend
Bush. As Joan Wilder notes in Romancing the Stone (written by Diane Thomas), "If there's one law of the west, it's bastards have brothers."

Today, Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted,
"The National Security Agency illegally collected tens of thousands of
domestic emails before being stopped in 2011. The disclosure was made
Wednesday in a newly declassified order from the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court, which oversees NSA spying. The FISC ordered the NSA
to change its procedures after the agency admitted to wrongly
collecting up to 56,000 emails a year over a three-year period. The NSA
says the illegal email collection resulted from technical error, not
deliberate snooping." Of course, it was just an accident. And
absolutely is has stopped. It's not like the US has a Director of
National Intelligence who lied to Congress or like the FISA court can't
monitor the NSA's actions. Oh, wait. James Clapper did lie to Congress (and has still not been punished) and Carol D. Leonnig (Washington Post) reported
just last week on how FISA said it was unable to monitor the NSA to
ensure that the agency is in legal compliance. Who's not talking? Sam Gustin (Time magazine) notes, "The nation’s largest telecommunications companies are maintaining their silence in the wake of a startling new report
describing how they’ve worked with the National Security Agency to help
build a surveillance system with the capacity to cover huge swaths of
U.S. internet traffic. The new revelations, detailed in a Wall Street Journalreport
published Wednesday, are among the latest in a series of disclosures
about the NSA’s secret surveillance programs that have prompted alarm from top lawmakers as well as civil libertarians and privacy advocates." Meanwhile Duncan Campbell, Oliver Wright, James Cusick and Kim Sengupta (Independent) report:

Britain
runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to
intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web
traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, The Independent has learnt.The station is able to tap into and extract data from the underwater fibre-optic cables passing through the region.The
information is then processed for intelligence and passed to GCHQ in
Cheltenham and shared with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the
United States. The Government claims the station is a key element in the
West’s “war on terror” and provides a vital “early warning” system for
potential attacks around the world.

We
live in the world’s most prosperous country, yet people are struggling
to meet their fundamental needs. We can no longer afford budget and
revenue policies that ignore people’s voices, needs and rights. NESRI’s
film illustrates how we can use human rights to develop an entirely
different way of making budgets.

A People’s Budget:

directly addresses people’s needs

is connected to accountability measures, with human rights indicators

starts with public participation and is fully transparent

decides revenue policy after determining a budget based on needs

Let’s put people’s needs and rights first! Join us in changing the conversation about budgets: share the film and connect with us about next steps you can take in your city or state.

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About Me

I'm Michael, Mike to my friends. College student working his way through. I'm also Irish-American and The New York Times can kiss my Irish ass. And check out Trina's Kitchen on my links, that's my mother's site.